Copyright © 2003 Allied Telesyn International, Corp.
While every effort has been made to ensure that the information contained within this techical note is
accurate, Allied Telesyn International can not accept any liability for errors in, or omissions arising from the use
of this information.
Technica l Note
Configuring Dynamic Host Configuration
Protocol version 6 (DHCPv6)
Introduction
DHCP6 is available from Software Release 2.6.1. A knowledge of IPv6 is assumed
throughout this document.
Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol for IPv6 (DHCP6) delegates IPv6 prefixes,
and allocates IPv6 addresses. It offers Stateful Address Autoconfiguration, and
complements the Stateless Address Autoconfiguration described in RFC 2462
"IPv6 Stateless Address Autoconfiguration". Stateless Address Autoconfiguration
allows an IPv6-aware device to be plugged into a network, and given an IP
address without manual configuration.
DHCPv6 and address autoconfiguration are not mutually exclusive. For
example, autoconfiguration can be used to obtain the addresses and a DHCPv6
server can be utilised to retrieve options that the client may require such as a
list of available DNS servers or NTP servers. Unlike IPv4, an IPv6 client always
has a link-local address, it is never without an address, so in a worst-case
scenario it could still communicate with other hosts on the same link. Due to
the fact that the client initially sends a SOLICIT message to a link-local
multicast address, the DHCPv6 server must be on the same link to receive the
initial SOLICIT message. A SOLICIT message is a message sent by a client to
locate DHCP6 servers.
Who uses DHCPv6?
DHCP is particularly useful for ISPs to allocate IPv6 prefixes to customer sites.
The creation and allocation of complete IPv6 addresses is then performed by
IPv6 stateless address autoconfiguration.
Another example of using DHCP is a University with a central DHCPv6 server
allotting prefixes to various departments campus-wide.
DHCPv6 is not present in Allied Telesyn Software releases until 2.6.1. For
familiarisation with the IPv6 protocol, please see the IPv6 chapter in your Allied Telesyn
Software Reference Manual.
A guide to configuring
DHCPv6 on your Allied
Telesyn router.
